


The Empire is No Place for Children

by loop of rosewood (klefkiblade)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Implied Past Violence, Implied/Referenced Abuse, episode 25/26 coda, the empire kids are unhappy that their friends got taken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-04 02:10:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16337765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klefkiblade/pseuds/loop%20of%20rosewood
Summary: A sickly-thin man in a tattered, dirty coat and a lean and spry, abrasive woman in fine, dyed robes would not appear at first glance to have much in common. But the Empire had ruled both of their childhoods. In service or in opposition to it, they had done horrible, monstrous things.The Empire Kids make a pact one day. They break it the next.





	The Empire is No Place for Children

Beauregard had left to gather more firewood.

 

She had not been gone long, and she had never left visual range of the too-small campsite the remaining Mighty Nein had almost reluctantly put together, but Caleb told the others (or rather, just Nott and Mollymauk) that he was going to help her out. Nott was not a fan of the idea at all, but reluctantly let him go after he suggested she use Message to keep tabs on him.

 

As he approached Beauregard, he saw her crouched down, picking up fallen branches and sticks. 

 

He opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by Nott’s voice in his head.

 

_ “CALEB ARE YOU ALRIGHT? Pleasereplytothismessage.” _

 

Caleb sighed. “Yes, Nott, I am fine,” he replied, and as he did, Beau startled and snapped around to look at him. For the brief moment before she turned away, trying to seem like she was deeply concentrated on the sticks, he noticed how puffy her eyes were.

 

“You shouldn’t fucking sneak up on people like that,” Beau muttered, barely any bite in her words.

 

He ignored her comment. “You know there is no shame in crying, Beauregard,” he said, much softer than he had intended.

 

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t help much either,” she muttered back, tension in her voice as tight as a bowstring ready to launch an arrow.

  
  


 

_ There was a little girl. The dress she wore was pink and flowy and lacy and tailored to fit her, but it felt stifling. Her knees were terribly scraped, and one leg had a heavy gash running down it. She was crying and screaming hysterically while a maid cleaned out the wounds. _

 

_ “Tears will get you nowhere,” said the girl’s father as he looked away. She didn’t know where he was looking, but it wasn’t at her. “You shouldn’t have been running around outside anyway.” _

 

\--

 

_ Slap. _

 

_ “No tears. You must not know fear nor sadness nor regret. Not for traitors. Not for the filth that would try to soil the Empire.” _

 

_ There was a boy. He was wearing clothes finer than anything he parents could have ever afforded, and he was going to be someone someday.  _

 

_ Tears stung his eyes at first, but with each subsequent slap, he learned better how to hold them back. _

 

 

“My father told me that tears were just a way to let the sadness out,” Caleb said. “Otherwise it just eats you up inside.”

 

“Your father sounds emotionally healthy,” Beau replied bitterly. She then caught her tone, and added, “Sorry. That was - sorry.”

 

Caleb stiffened for just a moment, but ultimately waved it off. “My point is: you don’t have to hide it from me, Beauregard.” He crouched down next to her and started to pick up sticks. “And if ever there was a day to cry…”

 

“...Today would be  **fucking** it,” Beau finished for him, pouring as much anger into that ‘ _ fucking _ ’ as she could manage without snapping entirely. She would rather ‘let the sadness out’ under the guise of anger, and in curses words rather than tears.

 

She had the silk flower necklace around her neck. She rubbed one of the petals in her fingers and stared at it. Jester had made a big show of taking it off before she went to sleep every night so she didn’t damage the flowers.

 

“Is this what it’s like? Caring about people?” Beau asked, still staring at the necklace.

 

 

_ It had been a simple delivery job with a small crew. The girl had been the local contact; she knew these sewers like the back of her hand, so she said, so she had led them through while they carried the cargo.  _

 

_ The giant rats had caught them off guard and chewed through the ankle of this old halfling, rendering him useless. A liability. _

 

_ “Leave him,” she said. “He’ll only slow us down.” No one disagreed.  _

 

_ People got left behind sometimes. It wasn’t a big deal. _

 

_ The halfling cursed and shouted at them, but one arrow to an eye socket silenced him for good. _

 

\--

 

_ Tired and bruised. Too exhausted to stand. Eodwulf and Astrid smiling and joking all the same. A warm feeling in his chest and the certainty that he would do anything for these two people. And the three of them would do anything for the Empire. _

 

_ The scent of burnt flesh tickled his nose. _

 

 

“Ja. This is what it’s like.”

 

“Well, they can have it back!” she spat, no anger, just pain. “Those fucking assholes! You can’t just- you can’t just come into someone’s life and make them CARE and then JUST FUCKING LEAVE!” she threw the sticks she had gathered with all the force she could muster, and they just scattered uselessly against the forest ground. 

 

After staring dully at the scattered sticks, Beau trudged forward, bending down to pick up the mess she’d made.

 

Caleb joined her, bundling up the sticks himself and then handing them over to her once they were done. 

 

“It’s bullshit,” Beau stated once all the sticks were back in her hands. Caleb wasn’t sure what she was referring to exactly, what exactly was ‘ _ bullshit _ ,’ but he still found himself agreeing all the same. It was all bullshit. Everything was bullshit.

 

“Ja,” he said simply. 

 

His blunt answer hit her like a ton of bricks, and tears stung her eyes, but she twisted all the sadness that was brimming in her into anger and spat, “We’ve been through so much together. We survived trolls and giants and crocodile-alligators - we took down a High Richter! We just saved those kids’ parents! And then - out of nowhere - they just -”

 

_ Someone took them. _

 

“-and we couldn’t do anything! We were just sleeping the whole time while they were…”

 

“Ja.”

 

Beau crumbled. She curled into a ball on the dirty forest floor and sobbed. There was no trying to hold back her grief, just deep heaving sobs twisting her face as hot tears and snot dribbled down to her quivering chin. She hid her face behind her knees and wrapped her arms around them tightly.

 

She felt Caleb’s hand on her back. He didn’t say anything. He was just...there. Present. Not gods-know-where, like Fjord and Jester and Yasha, but right there with her.

 

When she finally did pull her head out of the protective shell she’d made and looked over at him, just one eye peeking out from behind her curtain of arms and legs, he smiled. It was that sad smile he did, the one Beau wasn’t sure meant he was trying to be hopeful or that just found something painfully funny. 

 

“We’re going to get them back, Beauregard,” he said, voice cracked and low. And hard. Determined. 

 

Quietly, Beau admitted, "I've never-” she sniffed, "I've never felt like this before. I've never felt like…” She struggled to find the words.

 

"Like something was stolen that cannot be replaced,” Caleb finished for her. He said it with such understated confidence that she might have found it annoying in other circumstances.

 

"Yeah...and... like…” she still couldn't find the words. she would rather be punching the people who had taken their...their  _ friends _ until those shitbags were bloody beyond recognition than trying to talk about her feelings, but they had no leads, no way of tracking them down, and she was just ... useless.

 

Caleb, his voice almost a whisper and his tone flat, finished for her again, like reciting a tired verse, "Like there is a hole in your chest where your heart used to be, like it was physically ripped from you. Like you would give anything in the world to bring then back, to undo what was done, but you are not powerful enough to.” 

 

"Yeah. Like that,” Beau replied.

 

The silence that passed between them let their words hang in the air, the shared pain palpable - even outside their aching chests. The woods themselves had absorbed it and echoed it back with such an intensity that it crawled and clawed across their skin, every nerve alight with anxiety and frustration and anger.

 

In the heavy stillness, Caleb carefully and awkwardly moved the hand that had been on her back and wrapped it around her far shoulder, enveloping her in a side hug.

 

Beau let out one quiet laugh and a tiny smile as she recognized the attempt at being comforting. They really were two peas in a pod, despite their differences. She leaned into Caleb's embrace, and almost laughed again at the thought of the skinny, often meek wizard  _ that wanted to bend reality to his will _ appearing to be the more stable of the two of them.

 

"Beauregard,” Caleb pronounced, and Beau could sense a change in the tone of conversation.

 

"Yeah, Caleb?”

 

“Do you recall the pact we made yesterday?”

 

Beau turned her face to look at him, narrowing her eyes. "Yeah, I recall it.” With suspicion, she added, “What about it?”

 

Caleb did not reply right away. Instead, he was staring off into some distant point, as he often did, but something felt significant about this stare, like it wasn't just because he was uncomfortable with eye contact. It was familiar and unnerving for reasons that had nothing to do with Caleb.

 

"What if we… put it aside for now,” he said, and when he finished he looked Beau straight in the eye. "Just until we get them back.”

 

It was Beau's turn to be silent, her mouth shut as she was the one to break eye contact and look into some distant point.

 

With a hint of desperation, and a little more urgency, Caleb continued, “We are going to need to do everything in our power to get them back. Whoever... Whatever took them must be very capable, and we are… Without them, without Fjord and Jester and Yasha, we are much weaker. If the three of then could not stop themselves from being taken, how can the four of us hope to rescue them if we hold ourselves back?”

 

"So what you're saying is… you want to do whatever it takes.”

 

“Ja.”

 

_ Even if it's evil or chaotic. _

 

Beau met Caleb's gaze. She thought of Fjord, his calm and steady presence, his advice and leadership. His compassion for those kids they had helped just a day ago, how he directed the group and kept them safe. She thought of Jester's bright imagination and infectious joy, her pranks and smiles and it seemed the whole group was wrapped around her. Her unassuming nature and forthcoming honesty that put everyone at ease. She thought of Yasha, towering and resolute, cold in her violence but surprisingly shy and sweet in her friendships. Always running away, but still finding her way back. Somehow.

 

A new line of tears formed along Beau's eyes, but she held them back again. 

 

How had this happened? How had a kid who had never cared about anyone - not really- never had a friend, suddenly lose three people literally overnight and feel like someone had ripped her heart out of her chest? 

 

How did a kid who had killed his own parents, and then spent years in some unknown haze, and then years after that, alone, come to be able to say with such certainty that they were going to get back three people who were strangers just over a month ago?

 

 

_ The girl brushed open the flap covering the cage and peered inside. The beast, maw bound shut and limbs and neck clasped in manacles, started back at her, its one visible golden eye filled with such burning hatred, she could feel it boring through her heart. _

 

_ She whistled. “This’ll fetch a nice price,” she said to her contact. “I might know a few interested parties. I’ll check with them and get back to you.” _

 

_ She let the flap fall shut, but she could still feel the beast’s eyes on her. _

 

\--

 

_ The disgusting rebel keeled over, tears staining his cheeks, eyes as red and raw as what was left of his hands. “I don’t regret anything,” he spat, voice scratchy and rough, blood dribbling from his beaten lips. “If anything, I am honored to die...opposing an empire that makes weapons out of children.” _

 

_ The boy smirked. “And what a fine weapon I am,” he nearly cooed as he inspected the fire blazing across his flaking hand. “It is a shame. I had hoped you would be more helpful without me having to resort to cheap tricks. It was fun playing with you though.” _

 

_ He extinguished the flame, and then ran a little bit of honey across his lips. “I suggest you tell me where your accomplices are. Perhaps they will be smarter than you.” _

 

 

She took a breath, a deep sigh, releasing all the hopes she had tangled up in that pact they had made. She held Caleb's gaze steady. Just as she opened her mouth to speak -

 

Caleb flinched, and his expression was struck. Then, to the air, or presumably to Nott through a Message spell, he said, “Stay hidden. Beauregard and I will head back.” He turned to Beau. “Nott said there is someone on the road. Just one person.”

 

Beau nodded. “Yeah. Let’s head back then. Maybe try to flank whoever this is.”

 

“If they’re fortunate we won’t have to murder them,” Caleb said by way of agreement. Beau didn’t find that as unsettling as she should have.

 

They started to creep out of the woods, keeping under cover, and keeping one eye on where Nott and Molly were trying to hide in the campsite, and the other on the small, squat figure walking up the road.

 

“Hey, Caleb,” she said in a whisper, glancing over to Caleb.

 

“Yes, Beauregard?” he replied as he stared hard at the figure on the road.

 

"Whatever it takes,” she said, simply. Hard. Determined.

 

Caleb looked over to her, matching her expression with his.

 

“Whatever it takes.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the first draft of this sometime after episode 25, because I needed to process my emotions after so many characters I loved got brutally kidnapped up by slavers.
> 
> Anyways. The way the Iron Shepherds arc ultimately played out ended up being enough catharsis for me, but I wanted to get back into the swing of things writing-wise, and how better than to fix up a mostly-done WIP featuring my darling Empire Kids?


End file.
